Friday, May 27, 2016

Problems associated with 'blind faith.'

"Faith' had been always very interesting subject for me, by 'faith' I mean anyone's belief in something without verifying the truthfulness of that particular thing. Faith is an emotion and like other emotions this can also manifest in various forms and it can play a major role in developing the personality of many of us. For many people their 'faith' is an integral part of the day to day life. It helps them in many ways and for many it has become a necessary thing for their survival, it offers them the reasons for their existence. Like many other emotions faith also is being heavily commercialized emotion and there are various products in the market of faith to fulfil various needs of people who are interested in faith and its related aspects. Religion is one of the oldest and the most popular product which is ruling the market of faith for the longest time. Faith helps people to get over many difficult situations and offers some answers to many of their questions. Whether these answers are true or false, logical or illogical is not a matter of concern for all those who put all their trust in some faith. So it seems that this phenomena called 'faith' can do wonders in some cases, we can see many people doing admirable social work or philanthropic work inspired by their faith. This is all good and desirable side of faith, but at the same time we can also see that there are some who kill innocents in the name of their faith, there are few who attack civilians in the name of protecting their faith, this is another extreme where some people are so blinded by their faith that they don't hesitate to engage in such heinous and gruesome acts.

Why people react so differently while following same faith? Why some are extremely kind and some are extremely violent, but they both claim to have faith in same ideology? What makes some to perform extreme noble acts and some to take the path of gruesome violence while claiming to follow the same book of their faith? One can only say that, maybe the problem lies in 'blind faith.' Any product used without knowing about all its effects and side effects is bound to produce extreme reactions. Some of its side effects can be bad or even fatal and this is the main reason why blind faith on some holy book or religion produces such an extreme response to the good as well as bad side or human behavior spectrum. Someone might argue that faith is always blind, as whenever people put their faith in something they generally don't question it. May be this was true in the past but in today's world we are trained to question everything, and we should question as many things as possible. Questioning is the only way to move forward, inquiry is the first step in the direction of solving any puzzle or problem, no matter how complicated it is. If any faith or discipline is forbidding questioning beyond a certain point, then it means that it doesn't have answers to those questions, and the worst part is, it don't even want to seek those answers. This attitude is the main reason for existence of blind faith, any discipline or religion which can allow questioning can cultivate what I call a 'rational or logical faith,' this is exactly opposite of 'blind faith.' The difference between 'rational faith' and 'blind faith' is that in one case people believe in something by recognizing the fact that their beliefs can be questioned, challenged and there can be some problems associated with that which they should try to resolve. This system is much less dangerous than the system which commands 'blind faith' in anything.

I don't have to go into more details to describe the problems we are facing today because of issue of blind faith in today's world, issue of terrorism is just one of them. Many of these problems can be resolved or at least their impact can be minimized if people from the same 'faith system' take initiative to reform their faith so that such a blatant misuse of this very important human emotion can be curbed. Emotions like faith are here to stay, as humans we cannot get rid these things as they play a role of support system for many of us, but we all can definitely work to make these things better and I think the time has come where we all need to challenge the system of 'blind faith,' no matter which discipline or which religion is practicing it, we need to challenge it as misuse of this system has the potential to harm entire humanity.